We’re excited to release our next creation to the wild! Donny McCaslin’s ‘Fast Future’ is officially released today. Check out a great review from All About Jazz and an interview with some insight into Donny’s process at WBUR in Boston. Get your copy from the Greenleaf Music Online Store now!

Take a peek at the EPK and the live cut from the 55 Bar to get another taste of this great record.

Donny will be touring throughout the US and Canada, don’t miss the chance to see him live!

Label Director Dave Douglas debuts his new project HIGH RISK featuring SHIGETO at Trinosophes in Detroit on Wednesday, April 1. Detroiters and Ann Arborers come on through. Check out a track below, album release on June 23rd, 2015!

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A heartfelt congratulations to saxophonist and Greenleaf artist Donny McCaslin for being nominated for a 2013 GRAMMY Award for Best Improvised Jazz Solo! The aptly-titled “Stadium Jazz” is the opening tune on his “Casting For Gravity” album we released this year, and the one that has garnered this acclaim——it’s also one of our favorite jams on the record. You can stream the track in the Bandcamp player above. Enjoy!

Of course, an outstanding soloist needs outstanding accompaniment, and the personnel on this record is top shelf to say the least. Many thanks to Mark Guiliana, Jason Lindner, Tim Lefebvre, and producer David Binney for helping make this record all that it is.

via npr.org | Tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin got his start at age 12, when he began playing in his vibraphonist father’s band in Santa Cruz, Calif. That group played the Monterey Jazz Festival for three years. In 1984, McCaslin took a full scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston; while there, he performed regularly in the area with Ken Schaphorst’s True Colors Big Band.

McCaslin then joined with another vibraphonist, Gary Burton, and toured the world with him for four years. After moving to New York City, he performed with the group Steps Ahead, and has also played with the Gil Evans Orchestra, Danilo Perez, Maria Schneider, John Medeski, the Dave Douglas Quintet and many others.

McCaslin has recorded 10 albums as a leader. His most recent release, Casting for Gravity, fuses jazz with electronic textures influenced by artists such as Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada.

The great Duke Ellington described the best music as being “beyond category.” “Beyond Category with Eric Felten” brings the best of jazz, blues, swing, and more.

Join host Eric Felten in the clubs around Washington D.C. for a behind-the-scenes, intimate conversation with world-class musicians working in jazz and blues. Part interview, part jam session, explore the history, rhythms and sounds of great music.

Your host, a jazz trombonist in his own right, interviews great artists – and sits in to perform with them, taking the audience on an unpredictable musical adventure.

The Many Voices of Trumpeter and Composer Dave Douglas

By Will Layman

The most moving music of 2012 for me has surely been the collection Be Still, by trumpeter Dave Douglas. A serene and shimmering marriage between jazz and devotional hymns, Be Still was inspired by the death of Douglas’s mother—and it extinguished any notion that jazz is all cerebellum and no heart.

That this great work should come from Douglas in 2012 is hardly a surprise. Douglas has been a critical voice—and recently a critical mentor to younger players—in jazz for 20 years. And that it should mean that much to me is also not surprise. Douglas and I grew up in the place and time as I did, and—as he reflects the loss of his parents in his music—has many of my own concerns in his heart.

His music is personal. Putting aside Be Still, that may seem odd, as he is mainly a voice in today’s post-modern jazz, a realm of much abstraction not usually given to autobiography or confession. But Douglas’s work is personal because its incredible range and diversity, taken as a whole, is a portrait of a brilliant and complete man.

The last year shows this with perfect clarity. You can forget the broad swath of his work from previous years: his music for silent movie soundtracks, his use of turntables and electronics, his immersion in Balkan music and his album of Joni Mitchell covers. Douglas’s released music in the last 12 months is enough to suggest that he is the most interesting and heartfelt jazz musician in recent times.